HOME ENTERTAINMENT

composition in gray #4

Today I was asked what I do without television. I had so many answers I couldn't start listing, like basically, live my life. I didn't know where to start, esp since it was expected to be answered in a phrase or less. So I said, "Read." One word. One of those words that is followed by silence. Never, "Oh, what are you reading?" It's like saying the house you're in is known to have a ghost in it. That's when present company starts looking at their watch or remembering something they forgot, like they have to be someplace else in 10 minutes. I think, Don't ask questions you don't want answered.

That threw me into remembering my first years here. There came a time I realized that what I took for entertainment before, was something you went someplace besides where you are and pay to be entertained. I saw I was going to have to figure out ways to entertain self without going anyplace. Music. Movies. Books. Like right now I'm hearing Philip Glass's music to Martin Scorsese's Kundun, a Tibetan story filmed in Argentina. The film was beautiful. The Glass music is too. Writing you entertains me too.

I have thusfar skipped seeing Cold Mountain, a beautiful story of these mountains, because it was filmed in Romania. Plus it has Nicole Kidman. Barely animated Barbie. Tom Cruise's wife. Or used to be, or something. Haven't seen either one of them in the grocery store line lately. They must not be divorcing or cheating at this moment, or already have. Or they're getting old and a new generation of lookalikes are the Hollywood sensations this year. I'm glad to say I've never heard of them when I look at those Hollywood tabloids of somebody who gained 60 pounds or is bulimic, or drunk or cheated on. The sports stars too. I don't know who any of them are now that Michael Jordan retired. Tiger Woods, of course.

Michael Jackson, I'm glad I don't have to see any more pictures of him in his quest for Whiteness, which got him looking like a zombie. Brother from another planet. And now that he's dead, we're so concerned for his mental health, what a sad, lonely life this mega-billionaire lived, playing with children, any way you want to take that, Elizabeth Taylor's friend, like Andy Warhol. She must collect the lonely in the crowd people, or maybe the just too famous, like her, who turn weird from too much attention. Now his doctor is to blame and his doctor's assistant and this one and that one. The sky must be overcast with circling buzzards where they are.

Those people don't ever entertain me. Corporate lookalikes like in Nashville now, like Motown in the 60s, disco, formula pop devoid of the heart and soul of art. I'd kind of like to see that Tom Cruise race car movie for the race car action, but know it will be Top Gun: the sequel, with closeup shots of Hollywood glamor boy who gets multiple millions for posing in front of movie cameras as the Pillsbury doughboy in a racecar outfit, or a pilot outfit or whatever outfit. He and Kidman killed the Altman film, Eyes Wide Shut, that didn't have anything going for it anyway.

Right now much of my entertainment, being restricted to one house day and night, is getting subtler. I'm watching crows interact, getting to know the crow movements, telling them apart by their individual ways of hopping and walking. Some are brave, some are not. They're civil with one another, as a rule. Sometimes not, but that's seldom. Like among the 5 young one's I've been watching develop this summer, one will snatch an item of food from another. I've seen this one fly down and land beside a crow pecking on something, snatch the item and fly away, leaving the other one to stand there and look dumbfounded. I doubt that will develop into a habit. They have such an interdependent social organization going on among them, I've an idea the older ones will or have already had a talk with this brash young punk.

They appear to have peace among themselves. When one gets shot out of a tree, it's mama or papa, sister or brother, aunt or uncle, grandma or grandpa, cousin, 2nd cousin, 3rd, 4th. Each one is kin to all the others in its extended family. When you see a flock of crows, it's an extended family. They're all related. If uncle Willard gets shot on the way to work, everybody in the family knows about it right away. Word spreads to neighbor families. The crows know about us. A whole lot more than we know about them.

People I know who I appreciate, like the way I appreciate Jr with profound respect, entertain me. Hearing about people like Judy Womble of Judy's Tavern, someone I never knew, or someone like Oliver Sidden, who I did know, people of these mountains. Hearing of incidents in their lives turns out to be the most interesting when it comes to entertaining me. I can listen to Jr talk with interest, even now when his mind is fading away. Listening to anyone talk, actually, entertains me. I like to hear what other people have to say. I like about Facebook seeing all the different ways people take photographs. All are interesting. I'm entertained looking out the window and seeing the moon. Every place I've ever been the same moon was there when everything else was different.